Operator
Operator
Good morning ladies and gentlemen and welcome to the Church & Dwight Third Quarter 2016 Earnings Conference Call. Before we begin, I've been asked to remind you that on this call, the company's management may make forward-looking statements regarding, among other things, the company's financial objectives and forecasts. These statements are subject to risks and uncertainties and other factors that are described in detail in the company's SEC filings. I would now like to introduce your host for the call, Mr. Matt Farrell, Chief Executive Officer of Church & Dwight. Also please limit during the Q&A, your questions to one initial and one follow-up. Sir, please go ahead. Matthew T. Farrell - Church & Dwight Co., Inc.: Okay. Good morning, everybody. Thanks for joining us for today. I'll provide some color on the quarter and then turn the call over to Rick Dierker. When Rick is finished, we'll open the call up for questions. The Q3 was a solid quarter for our company. EPS exceeded our outlook, organic sales growth of 1.2% was in line with our August outlook of 1% to 2%. We would have been at the high end of the range if not for a far worse than expected result in our animal nutrition business which was an unexpected 70 basis points drag on the outlook. The quality of earnings was high this quarter. We expanded gross margin, we invested in higher marketing of 50 bps and SG&A was lower year-over-year. We overcame a high tax rate, a small product recall, and a big decline in our animal nutrition business and still beat our EPS outlook by $0.01. Our Consumer business delivered volume-driven organic sales growth of 2.5%, led by continued strong growth by our international Consumer business. In the U.S., our organic sales growth met our expectations, reflecting higher couponing as we communicated back in August. The good news is category growth was broad-based. Ten of our 15 categories grew in the quarter. Now, I'm going to say a few words about four of our categories. The laundry category continues to be healthy, growing 4% year-over-year, and our laundry business grew with the category. This is the sixth quarter in a row of laundry category growth driven by both the unit dose and liquid segments. In liquid laundry detergent, this quarter marked the 27th consecutive quarter of share growth for ARM & HAMMER liquid laundry. In contrast, our XTRA brand lost share in the quarter, as we continued to see deep competitive discounting. Similar to what we said in Q2, we expect XTRA net profits to increase year-over-year for full-year 2016, and we have plans to turn around that brand. Also in the liquid category, OXICLEAN grew share to 1.8%, driven by strong promotional support. As we have said before, we are committed to OXICLEAN laundry detergent. We are encouraged by the trial activity in this most recent quarter, and our repeat rate continues to improve. Turning to the unit dose segment, our unit dose products continued to gain traction and had some of the largest gains in the category. For the second consecutive quarter ARM & HAMMER unit dose grew twice the unit dose category growth rate. And our growth was driven by our bi-layer and dual chamber innovations. Most important, our unit dose business was equally driven by base and promoted volume, signaling a healthy balance. ARM & HAMMER unit dose grew 50 basis points to 3.2% share in the quarter. Similarly, OXICLEAN unit dose also grew share in the quarter and is now a 1.1% share. These are encouraging signs as we continue to go in the right direction. Finally in fabric care, the stain fighter category grew 3.2%. OXICLEAN grew consumption 7% and is the leading stain fighter in the additive category with a 48% share. OXICLEAN grew share 170 basis points in the quarter. The litter category continues to be very competitive with increased couponing. For the quarter, the litter category was up 3.7%, while our brands were flat in measured channels. Our shipments were up as our online litter business more than doubled. Long-term we have won in this category through innovation, which continues to be our focus. Now we'll talk about vitamins. The overall VMS category continues to show steady growth, up 3.8%. The gummy segment of VMS grew 10% in Q3, which includes both adult gummies up 14% and children's gummies down 5%. Our adult brand VITAFUSION had another good quarter, growing consumption 9.7% with the success of our new products. L'IL CRITTERS children's gummy had a great quarter and grew consumption 6.6% compared to a 5% decline in the category. This is the second consecutive quarter that we have outpaced the children's gummy category. Today the gummy form of the entire adult VMS category is 10%. It was 3% when we bought the business four years ago. VITAFUSION and L'IL CRITTERS are the number one brands, with shares of 28% and 30% in measured channels respectively. Adult gummies is where we are putting our focus. It is underdeveloped and will be the source of future growth for us. The last category I'll address is dry shampoo. This category grew almost 27% in Q3 after growing 26% in Q1 and 28% in Q2. The category in the U.S. is now over $100 million with the potential to be a $300 million category if we match the historical category growth experienced in the UK where the product originated. BATISTE is the number one brand in the U.S. with a 23.6% share. The BATISTE brand is expected to be one of the fastest-growing brands in the future for us. Now I'm going to talk about International. Our International Consumer business has emerged as a growth driver for Church & Dwight. After growing 3% to 4% annually from 2011 to 2014, our International business grew 8% in 2015 and is expected to hit 9% in 2016. BATISTE is only part of the story. Many brands have contributed to the success story. We have enjoyed stellar growth in Europe, Canada, and Mexico this year, while our export business continues to open new doors for our brands. We look forward to steady, strong growth from the International business in the future. Our Q3 total company organic growth was held back by significantly lower volume in our animal nutrition business, which reflects depressed milk prices. When we began the year we expected full-year growth from this business to be 1% to 3%, and now we're expecting a 9% decline on a full-year basis. That is quite a reversal. Thanks to the strength of our Consumer business, we expect to deliver 8% EPS growth and 3% organic growth for full-year 2016. We said we're early in our 2017 planning process; we'll say more about that in February, but for now we again expect high-single digit EPS growth next year. Next up is Rick to give you details about third quarter results, the outlook for Q4 and the full-year. Richard A. Dierker - Church & Dwight Co., Inc.: Thank you, Matt, and good morning, everybody. I'll start with EPS. Third quarter reported EPS was up 4.4% to $0.47 per share, compared to $0.45 in 2015, which was $0.01 ahead of our $0.46 outlook. Reported net sales were up 1% to $871 million, organic sales growth of 1.2% was in line with our 1% to 2% range, but at the lower end, dragged down by the 70 basis point hit from our SPD business. When we spoke to you in August, we assumed a 3% decline in that business versus the 11% decline we experienced. Now let's review the segments. Consumer Domestic's organic sales increased by 0.8% in the quarter. Volume growth was solid at 2.1%, offset by 1.3% drag from pricing. Now we expected approximately 1% organic for that business as we had anticipated the incremental couponing to support our new products and Q4 promotional shifts. As mentioned, we were a little below 1%, as we also got hit with returns due to a small product recall from our Orajel business. I know you guys are a fan of stacked numbers. So I wanted to call out our volume results for Q3. Of the 3.5% stack organic, all of it is volume. Looking ahead to Q4, we expect organic sales to be 2.5% for the Domestic business. That translates to maintaining our full-year organic sales outlook of 3%. Consumer International organic growth was up an impressive 12.1%. BATISTE continues to build depth of distribution in many countries, OXICLEAN and ARM & HAMMER continue to expand in North America and TROJAN continues to do well in Latin America. We're raising our expectation for the full-year organic growth from 7% to approximately 9% for the International business. To recap, 3% for the Consumer Domestic business for the full-year and 9% for the Consumer International business equates to 4% full-year growth for the global Consumer business and we are really pleased with that result. For our SPD division, organic sales were down 11.5%. Milk prices continue to be low due to an excess global supply of milk and weak exports due to a strong dollar. As said in the past, we like this business but we do experience these cycles from time to time. On the bright side, the industry does forecast a slight improvement in milk prices in 2017. Turning now to gross margin, our reported third-quarter gross margin was 45.4%, a 60 basis point increase from year ago, primarily due to lower commodities in our productivity programs. Q3 gross margin benefited from lower commodities worth 40 basis points, productivity programs and lower manufacturing costs worth 60 basis points. We also had 30 basis points from higher margin acquired business and going the other way we had a drag of 50 basis points from price/volume mix, as we had the higher promotional investments, largely the couponing we discussed earlier, plus we had a 20 basis point drag from currency. Now moving to marketing, we increased marketing spend by 5.8% year-over-year. Marketing as a percent of net sales increased 50 basis points to 11.3%. SG&A as a percentage of net sales was 11.6%, a 30 basis point decrease from the prior year. This decline was primarily due to the timing of R&D spend and lower litigation costs. Now on to operating margin, the reported operating margin for the quarter was 22.5%, which is 40 basis points higher than the prior year, and the other good news is as a proxy for cash earnings, our EBITDA margin was up to 26% in the quarter. Next income taxes, our effective rate for the quarter is 35.6% and we continue to expect our full-year rate to be 35%. Turning to cash, we had a really strong cash flow quarter. On a year-to-date basis we have generated $495 million of cash from operations, an $86 million increase from the same period a year ago, primarily due to higher cash earnings and improved working capital. So in conclusion, the third quarter highlights include a strong consumer organic growth rate of 2.5%, increased gross margin expansion as we exceeded our outlook by $0.01, even after absorbing a hit from the SPD revenue decline and a small product recall. Turning now to the fourth quarter outlook, we expect Q4 organic sales growth of approximately 1% to 2%. The Consumer business is expected to pick up steam in the fourth quarter at 2.5% organic growth while we expect the dairy business to be down 13% and a drag on the total company organic sales growth. We expect fourth-quarter earnings per share of approximately $0.42, compared to $0.41 a share a year ago or a 2% increase year-over-year. For context, the significant year-over-year decline in SPD revenues equates to $0.01 drag to the EPS line. And we also have a higher tax rate that equates to about $0.01. You may recall the Q4 2015 tax rate had the full-year R&D credit all in one quarter. Turning to the full-year, we now expect organic sales growth to be at the lower end of our 3% to 4% range, which reflects the previously discussed headwind from our Specialty Products Division. We continue to expect gross margin expansion of 110 basis points due to continued lower commodity costs and greater distribution efficiencies. And we also continue to expect 60 basis points of full year operating margin expansion and to deliver 8% EPS growth. Finally, we now expect $650 million of operating cash flow and $50 million of CapEx for the full year. This equates to $600 million of free cash flow, which represents over 125% free cash flow conversion. Now, Matt and I will open it up for questions.